it blazed as if in triumph at the sun’s retreat. ’Tis a fair land that Houston Texans Tröjor of France, a gentle, a green, and a beautiful; the home of arts and arms, of chivalry and romance, and (however sadly stained by the excesses of modern times) ’twas the unbought grace of nations once, and the seat of ancient renown and disciplined valor.
And of all that fair land of France, whose beauty is so bright and bravery is so famous, there is no spot greener or fairer than that one over which our travellers wended, and which stretches between the good towns of Vendemiaire and Nivose. ’Tis common now to a hundred thousand voyagers: the English tourist, with his chariot and his Halpa Miehet Scythe Takki Harvey’s Sauce, and his imperials; the bustling commis-voyageur on the roof of the rumbling diligence; the rapid malle-poste thundering over the chaussee at twelve miles an hour — pass the ground hourly and daily now: ’twas lonely and unfrequented at the end of that seventeenth century with which our story commences.
Along the darkening mountain-paths the two gentlemen (for such their outward Philadelphia Eagles bearing proclaimed them) caracoled together. The one, seemingly the younger of the twain, wore a flaunting feather in his James Rodriguez Drakt barret-cap, and managed a prancing Andalusian palfrey that bounded and curveted gayly. A surcoat of peach-colored samite and a purfled doublet of vair bespoke him noble, Maillot Belgique Pas CHer as did his brilliant Edmonton Oilers Drakter eye, his exquisitely chiselled Maillot Bosnie-Herzégovine Pas CHer nose, and his curling chestnut ringlets.
Youth was on his brow; his eyes were dark and dewy, like spring-violets; and spring-roses bloomed upon his cheek — roses, alas! that bloom and die with life’s spring! Now bounding over a rock, now playfully whisking off with his riding rod a floweret in his path, Philibert de Coquelicot rode by his darker companion.
His comrade was mounted upon a destriere of the true Norman breed, that had first champed grass on the green pastures of Aquitaine. Thence through Berry, Picardy, and the Limousin, halting at many a city and commune, holding joust and tourney in many a cast |
